The PR Year

While I wait for my washing at the laundrette to finish I thought I'd pop over to my local internet cafe and quickly jot down some thoughts on this year.

Briefly.

I think it's been surreal this year. The number one stories dominating the news this year were either about a missing girl in Portugal, or a man missing in a canoe. We like drama, sex, drugs and rock' n roll and that's why Amy Winehouse has had such a fantastic year, although tragically she seems weeks away from the publicity killing her.

We watched as Facebook dominated the world even though it still continues to grow, if I were Mark Zuckerberg I would sell up fast before it becomes the next Myspace.

PR struggled this year in my opinion. Bite PR got the Facebook account, successfully proving that something that has become so successful without PR, is now preparing for a dark era where expert help will be needed to keep the advertisers interested.

My favorite PR this year has to be - Richard Branson flying in at the scene of the Virgin train crash. Pure genus and pure Branson. I remember watching it live and he stood there and defended his trains, the heroic driver and Virgin. I distinctly remember thinking that I had no quarrels getting on a train of any description afterwards, and that certainly Virgin was still safe.

My PR low was the amount of coverage the Simpson's Movie got. The PR stunt was to draw a picture of Homer in a cliff edge, not very moving, didn't get me thinking about the movie, and it just left me thinking how much money wasted, and the limits the PR team imagination stretched too when offered such a large scale budget.

What next? Google will retain the crown, no doubt with the demand for mobile media to go global. The iPhone was slick, but I see Google doing something truly different and far superior. Too sum up, which I don't think could have been done better than Jeff Jarvis - "This may have been Facebook's year. But so far, it is still Google's century."